Pinar del Rio.-The liquor bars have become Cuba's museums of natural history
to help us through our daily grind. At a bar one sees everything, from the
habitual drunk - determined to die at the bottom of a bottle - to those who
actually have hated alcohol most of their lives.

Now mindful of the bar schedules, the latter are the newer bar flies. On our
island, with so much misery and scarcity, our bars have filled with all
sorts of characters.

One can see policemen recently expelled from their jobs for corruption
mingling with old bearded revolutionaries - the original ones from the
hills. Some of the new arrivals were just yesterday's untouchables. These
include province government bureaucrats who, from inside their cars, didn't
know what was happening outside.

These characters, minus their ranks, which were taken away for one reason or
another, look for the solidarity offered by the cigar smoke and the common
sweat - all soaked in alcohol. The policeman who up until recently hated the
unemployed, speaks to one of that very same category, inventing love
stories. No longer a policeman, he now has become a confidante at the local
bar.

The unemployed hold no grudges. On the contrary, they are grateful,
especially when this time the policeman pays for the drinks.

At a city bar, the heretofore haughty bureaucrat has now become a tearful
victim of injustice. At times he screams out his hatred and occasionally
lets go an oath about a high-placed secret or a deficiency only those in
high places would know about.

As the days wear on, these characters, suddenly thrown into a new status,
seem to adapt - at least on the surface. They blend with those drinking and
smoking who seem to have been always at these bars, now turned into temples
to the noise, intrigue and remorse.

One can hear the crying in the midst of a drunken haze of an ex-policeman
or a former government inspector. Many are now people who used to look down
on their own mothers.

That's the way things have become. The stories at all these bars are
probably similar, a routine shared among them. Corrupt policemen,
bureaucrats caught "in the act," inspectors who extorted one too many times.
These are such common tales.

One sees also the fellow who up until yesterday was "down and out," now with
a suit or uniform in the high role of a new "authority." He will come
around asking for ID's from those he hated the most. He will go directly for
the ex-policeman he despised. A simple role exchange.

All of Cuba seems that way. Roles often have been reversed. The bars are
little more than a showcase for our social reality. If you visit Cuba, enter
one of our regular bars. You might be surprised to drink a low quality rum,
pay for it in our national currency and hear a bureaucrat cry out his
longing for the job he lost.

You may end up talking to workers who earn a miserable wage and came there
to drown their sorrows among the unemployed, the beggars and those thrown
out of their jobs, now all together as brothers and yet isolated in their
life struggles. You will be at the place deserved by those frustrated
formerly "untouchables" whose turn to swell the ranks of the losers has
arrived.